Happiness

I found something long-forgotten today.

It all started when I saw this awesome pin on Pinterest this morning and thought "Wow--I have a TON of cards and postcards that friends have sent me over the years (mostly my college/sorority bestie Danielle) that are just shoved into a drawer right now.  This is a great way to save them!"

This post has nothing to do with me creating this card journal.

I have this journal that a friend gave me a few years ago that has a pocket in the back of it.  For years I have been shoving letters, cards, notes, and other little things into the pocket, and I knew that it would be the first place to look for things to put in my card journal.  I found lots of them (gosh, Danielle has done A LOT of traveling!) but I also found a piece of folded notebook paper with a long list of things on it.  Back in 11th grade, my best friend Nikie and I made "happiness lists," which were on-going lists of things that made us happy.  Simple, quiet, important things that made life worthwhile.

So of course I started re-reading my list.
And oddly, just reading the list made me happy.  :)
So here are some of the better things from my list that make me smile and make life good:

When it rains in the afternoon, painted toenails, walking in the woods in the fall, warm grass on my legs, bare feet, being kissed on the tip of my nose, new crayons, giggling, singing at the top of my lungs, knowing that God is always with me, teaching kids, girl scout cookies, getting pictures back from the developer (that one makes me feel dated...), the ice cream truck, palm trees, harvest moons, meaningful hugs, blowing bubbles, fortune cookies, colored construction paper, birthday candles, bubble baths, the way it smells after it rains, going on a picnic, county fairs in the summer, open-air markets, pay day, having the house to myself on a warm Saturday afternoon, hot cocoa with marshmallows, backyard pickup football games, the way milk squishes out of the Chex squares when you eat them, being loved unconditionally by someone that I love unconditionally.

There are so many more things on this list, but reading through it these ones caught my eye.  After almost 10 years, these are things that still make me smile, still make me feel happy and comfortable.  Granted, there are things on that list that no longer make me happy the way they used to (ahhh my "boys who play guitar" stage...hahaha).  But it made me realize that while my overall tastes in things will change, what genuinely makes me happy deep in my heart will always remain.  It's part of me, it's who I am, and it will always be there.  And that makes me happy to know :)